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Sunday, 28 November 2010

Khamenei bats for Pakistan (PO)

M D Nalapat

Iran
has figured significantly in the Indian strategic calculus for a
considerable period of time. Although relations with that important
country were strained during the period when the Shah of Iran ruled the
Peacock throne, they became better when Mohammad Khatami was President.
He succeeded in ensuring an increase in the number of Iranian students
studying in Indian universities, and presided over an increase in trade
and in other contacts. As President, Hashemi Rafsanjani also paid a lot
of attention to India, a link that has continued even after he stepped
down from that post. However, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has not been as
attentive towards the importance of India, and ties have become weaker
since he took office. Part of the reason has been the rise in tensions
between Iran and two allies of India, the US and Israel. During his
first visit to Tehran, this columnist saw several banners and signboards
wishing death to Israel and the US, and in his talk to students at
Shahid Behesti University, began by pointing out that India regarded
both Israel and the US as very close allies, and if anyone in the
audience objected to listening to a speaker admitting that fact, she or
he was welcome to leave. However, the natural good manners of the
Persian people asserted themselves over the hatred for the US and Israel
that forms an intrinsic part of some elements of Iranian society, and
nobody left the hall. This great culture, one that has lasted for
thousands of years, is one of the major reasons why India and Iran are
likely to remain close to each other.

The Shah of Iran was a
close ally of the US, which is probably why he took a very strong
pro-Pakistan position during both the 1965 as well as the 1971 conflict
between India and the world’s second-most populous Muslim country (after
Indonesia). As a result of the clear tilt of the Shah of Iran towards
Pakistan, relations with Delhi suffered, and remained chilly till the
Shah abdicated in 1979. Soon after that, the war between Iraq and Iran
started, and this became the cause for India to withdraw its military
trainers from Iraq, as there was no intention to take sides in a
conflict between two of the most important countries of the Middle East.
The withdrawal of military cooperation by India annoyed Saddam Hussein,
especially as the Iraqi strongman had been as close a friend of India
as Egypt’s Gamal abdel Nasser had been in the past. However, the gesture
did not lead to any improvement in ties with Iran. These had to wait
till Rafsanjani and Khatami took over.

India was particularly
grateful to Iran because that country did not join Saudi Arabia and
Turkey in taking a pro-Pakistan line on Kashmir. Of course, for a long
period (including the whole of the 1990s), almost the whole world sided
with Pakistan on Kashmir, pushing for Delhi to release its grip on the
country’s only Muslim-majority state. China, the EU and the US were on
the Pakistan side, as were the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Only
Russia was on India’s side. During those lonely daus, Iran was steadfast
in not joining the Bill Clinton-led chorus on Kashmir, a fact that led
to Delhi enhancing ties with that country, including transport projects
that helped India to secure access to Central Asia in a context where it
had been barred by Pakistan from accessing that region via Afghanistan.
India emerged as a major market for Iranian hydrocarbon and as a source
of refined fuel, a situation that continues to this day. Also, after
voting against Iran in the IAEA because of the fear that otherwise the
US Congress would vote against the India-US nuclear deal, India once
again began to adopt a balanced stand, backing Iran’s right to nuclear
technology though not to the atomic bomb. Trade continued to expand,
despite US sanctions on Iran and silent pressure from Washington to cut
off all links between Teheran and Delhi.

Iran being a Shia
country and the Shias of Kashmir not sharing the same perceptions as the
Sunnis of the Kashmir Valley about Indian rule, it had been assumed in
Delhi that Tehran would not seek to stoke the Kashmir fire. And for
decades, this was the case. It was therefore with shock that South Block
listened to Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran,
calling on Muslims all over the world to take action on Kashmir. This
was a return to the policy followed by the Shah of Iran, and clearly
Supreme Leader Khamenei was willing to sacrifice Iran’s ties with India
and perhaps its business links in order to declare his support for the
ongoing struggle in Kashmir. The External Affairs Ministry issued a
demarche to the Iranian envoy to New Delhi - perhaps for the first time -
and at the UN Human Rights debate, India abstained from voting against a
resolution condemning human rights violations in Iran, whereas till
then, it had always voted against such a motion and in support of Iran.

The
resolution against Iran got passed by a huge majority, even though
another key geopolitical player, Saudi Arabia, also abstained. The
Ministry of External Affairs is watching to see if Supreme Leader
Khamenei repeats the Kashmir comment. If he does, then business links
will get affected, and India may join the US and the EU in the
enforcement of sanctions against Iran Grand Ayatollah Khamenei obviously
believes that India is no different from the US and Israel. Hence he
sees not two but three satans, the US, Israel and India. Being Iranian,
he exempts Europe from such a classification. The Iranian people have
always had an affinity to Europe, and President Ahmedinejad himself has
been seeking to improve ties with European countries, especially with
Germany, a country much admired by him and by the Supreme Leader. Should
Iran abandon its earlier stance on Kashmir and join with Pakistan in
calling this an issue as core to the Muslim psyche as Palestine, that
would mark a shift in Iranian policy in a way that would create
substantial disquiet in India. The expectation has been that Iran would
continue to be an important partner of India, a stand that has been
explained to the US several times by India. However, to India, Kashmir
is a core issue, over which there can be no compromise, except those
that recognize Indian sovereignty.

How will the Iranian ruling
group react to the anger in Delhi about Grand Ayatollah Khamenei’s
comment? Today, the US and the EU have placed Kashmir on the
back-burner, because of the need to develop better commercial ties with
India. The growth of the Indian market has been so fast that it cannot
be ignored. When Bill Clinton imposed harsh sanctions on India after the
1998 nuclear tests, the only losers were US companies, who were
eliminated from competing against EU and other firms. Four years later,
when several western governments created a false panic about a nuclear
war between India and Pakistan, it was Ambassador Blackwill in Delhi and
Colin Powell in Washington who came up with the idea of mass evacuation
of nationals of the US and the EU from India. Although it was clear
that the Pakistan army would never risk a nuclear retaliation by
launching an attack on India, while India had a “No First Use” policy
that eliminated any chance of striking first, the US administration and a
few think-tank funded by the US Defense and State departments spread
the propaganda that a nuclear war was imminent. The country that knows
the Pakistan army best is China, and Chinese diplomats refused to join
US and EU diplomats in running away from Delhi on the first flight that
they could catch, together with tens of thousands of their
fellow-countrymen. This ignominious flight led to a feeling of contempt
for the countries that had ordered their nationals to run away from
India, and helped ensure that thereafter, companies from Southeast and
East Asia overtook Western companies in India.

Although Iran
under Khamenei seems to have decided to make an enemy out of India, the
good news for Delhi is that far more important country - China - seems
to have become more sensitive to the fact that Kashmir is as core to
India as Tibet is to China. By giving only stapled visas to Kasmiris,
the Chinese had annoyed the Indians, but it seems that such a policy has
been abandoned by Beijing. The giving up of stapled visas for Kashmiris
will help make the atmosphere for Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to India
next month more productive. What has been lost in Iran seems to be
getting gained in China. Just as Pakistan sees Kashmir as core, so does
India. Hence the prospect of decades of tension between India and
Pakistan. However, now Islamabad can be happy that it has found a
champion in Supreme Leader Khamenei of Iran, who has called for a war
against India on the issue of Kashmir.

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About Prof. MD Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal University, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MDNalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.